Origin of the Name America. 


291 


E 1*2.5 
1875.] 


Where overhead the mournful bough 
Sighed with her then and sigheth now. 


She told this tale and went her way 
Like a live mist, so thin and gray; 
Forgotten was her prophecy, 
Despised, forever gone was she. 


But oh, Time saw a burial there 
Where Hilda tore her hoary hair; 

God rest her soul, where’er she- be — 

The sweet girl sleeps so peacefully! 

John Vance Cheney. 


i \ LA*/ '-'V/ ' ' ) f \ 

• » u 

ORIGIN OF THE NAME AMERICA. 


» 

The controversy as to the priority of 
discovery and the honor of bestowing a 
name on the New World has been so long 
undecided, — almost three centuries, — 
that any light thrown upon this intri- 
cate problem may help its true solution, 
if the truth be discoverable at this late 
day; and with this hope I offer the fol- 
lowing!: contribution. 

A meric, Amerrique , or Amerique is the 
name in Nicaragua for the high land or 
mountain range that lies between Jui- 
galpa and Libertad, in the province of 
Chontales, and which reaches on the one 
side into the country of the Carcas In- 
dians, and on the other into that of the 
Ram as Indians. The Rios Mico, Arti- 
gua, and Carca, that form the Rio Blew- 
fields; the Rio Grande Matagalpa, and 
the Rios Rama and Indio, that flow 
directly into the Atlantic; as well as 
the Rios Comoapa, May ales, Acoyapa, 
Ajocuapa, Oyale, and Terpenaguatapa, 
flowing into the Lake of Nicaragua, all 

O O' 

have their sources in the Americ range . 1 

The names of places, in the Indian 
dialects of Central America, often termi- 
nate in ique or ic , which seems to mean 
“ great,” “ elevated,” u prominent,” 
and is always applied to dividing ridges, 

1 See public documents of the Nicaragua govern- 
ment; and The Naturalist in Nicaragua, by Thomas 
Belt, Svo, London, 1873. 


or to elevated, mountainous countries, 
but not to volcanic regions: for instance, 
Nique and Aglasinique in the Isthmus 
of Darien (Estados Unidos de Colom- 
bia) ; Tuearique and Amerrique in Ni- 
caragua; Amatique, Manabique, Cha- 
parristique, Lepaterique, Llotique, and 
Ajuterique in Honduras ; Atenquique 
(Estados Unidos de Mexico); Tactic 
and Polocliic in Guatemala ; Tepic, 
Acatic, and Mesquitic in the state of 
Jalisco. The list of Indian local or 
other names, with the termination of ique 
or ic, as Cacique or Cacic, great chief, 
might be easily lengthened. 

It is now well known, through the 
learned researches of philologists for the 
last twenty years, that no denominations 
are more securely established than the 
names of localities — mountains, valleys, 
lakes, rivers. Even the most absolute 
conquest, unless it totally exterminate 
the aboriginal race inhabiting a country, 
does not destroy entirely the names of 
localities, or lieux-dits , as the French so 
well express it. These names may be 
slightly modified, by various spelling, 
but the primitive sound remains. And 
even where the aboriginal race entire- 
ly disappears, the names of places are 
often preserved, at least as synonyms; 
of which there are many examples in 
Canada, in New England, in the State 






ri°\ o * 

v! 


% 






292 

of New York, and elsewhere through- 
out the Union. 

The question to be decided is, whether 
the word Americ or Amerrique, desig- 
nating a part of the terra jirma discov- 
ered by Crist of oro Colombo, on his fourth 
and last voyage to the New World, was 
known to the great navigator, and con- 
sequently could have been repeated by 
him or by the companions of his voyage. 
There is no certainty of this ; for the 
word is not found in the very brief ac- 
count he has left us. But as the origin 
of the word Americ has been until now 
an enigma, in spite of the different in- 
terpretations of it that have been given, 
and as Yespuchy had nothing to do with 
this name, entirely unknown to him, 
— the inventor of the word Americi or 
America being a printer and bookseller 
in a small town hidden in the Vosges 
Mountains, — it is perhaps well to re- 
view the facts, and to show where lies 
the greatest probability for a true solu- 
tion of the origin of this word America, 
which denominates alone a hemisphere. 

In the Lettera Rarissima of Cristoforo 
Colombo giving an abridged description 
of his fourth voyage, 1502-3, he says 
that after having passed the Cape Gra- 
cias a Dios, on the Mosquito coast, he 
reached the Bio Grande Matagalpa, 
which he called the Disaster Biver, and 
after remaining anchored there for sev- 
eral days, he stopped some time for re- 
pairing his ships and giving rest to the 
crews, between the small island of La 
Huerta (the Garden Quiribiri) and the 
continent, opposite the village Cariai or 
Cariay. Cariai is so like Carcai, or the 
dwelling-place of the Carcas Indians, 
who still live in that neighborhood, that 
it is possible the variation is caused by 
an error in reading the manuscript letter 
of Colombo, the c having been mistaken 
for an i. 

The great object of the desires and re- 
searches of Colombo and his company 
was the finding of gold mines; and of 
these the inhabitants of Cariai or Carcai 
had much to relate; they led Colombo to 
another village called Carambaru, whose 
inhabitants wore golden mirrors round 
their necks. These Indians named sev- 


[ March, 

eral places where mines of gold existed, 
the last named being Yeragua, twenty- 
five leagues distant on the coast. 

Colombo and his company were struck 
by the number of sorcerers (medicine 
men) among the Cariai or Carcai; and 
the sailors afterwards thought they had 
been bewitched by them, as they suffered 
from the many tempests and mishaps of 
all sorts they were obliged to endure for 
the rest of the voyage. 

What was the geographical position of 
Cariai (Carcai), Carambaru, and Yera- 
gua? Yeragua is known to be in the 
great Bay of Cliiriqui (Costa Bica) : Co- 
lombo says in his narration, “It is the 
custom in this territory of Yeragua to 
bury the chief men with all the gold they 
possess ; ’ ’ and in these last years gold 
has been found in the tombs of the ab- 
origines of that country. Carambaru 
was at least twenty-five leagues distant 
from Yeragua (Cliiriqui), which brings 
us a little to the north of the Bio San 
Juan and Greytown. Cariai (Carcai) 
must have been a little farther north, in 
the neighborhood of the mouth of the 
Bio Blewfields (of which the Bio Carca 
is one of the affluents), where are several 
islands, and this accords with the narra- 
tion of Colombo. The Carcas Indians 
inhabit all this region, and work to-day 
in the gold mines of Santo Domingo and 
Liber tad, on the Bio Mico, another af- 
fluent of the Blewfields, at the foot of 
the Americ (or Amerrique) range. Ca- 
rambaru was probably near the Bio Ra- 
ma, and in the country of the Ramas In- 
dians. Now the Ramas and Carcas In- 
dians have always resisted all attempts 
at civilization ; most of them, especially 
the Ramas, are wholly savage, and al- 
low no one to penetrate into their coun- 
try; they have remained the same as 
they were when Colombo visited them 
in 1502. 

It is well known with what tenacity 
the Indians attach themselves to all their 
surroundings ; and the Americ or Amer- 
rique range forms the highest chain of 
mountains in the country of the Carcas 
and Ramas Indians, the average being 
three thousand feet; making a dividing 
line between the waters flowing directly 


Origin of the Name America . 



V 


's. 


2 I C 


1875.] 


Origin of the Name America . 


293 


co 



o 

CO 

- 

-v 


\ 


into the Atlantic, and those that empty 
into the Lake of Nicaragua. According 
to travelers who have visited certain 
places in the neighborhood of Libertad, 
Juigalpa, and Acoyapo, this mountain 
range is very conspicuous; it is seen 
from afar, with its precipitous rocks, 
great white cliffs, and huge, isolated, 
rocky pinnacles. This ridge divides the 
country into two parts, distinguished by 
totally different climates. To the east 
continual rains have caused impenetra- 
ble forests, and to the west of this divid- 
ing line the country is arid and unpro- 
ductive for want of rain. The Americ 
range prevents the passage of all the 
moisture from the Atlantic. The direc- 
tion is from north-northwest to south- 
southeast, and the last spur of the range 
is on the Atlantic coast a little to the 
north of Greytown; the ramifications 
being in the country of the unapproach- 
able and savage Ramas Indians. 

There is the strongest evidence that 
this word, denoting; the range and the 
rocks of Amerrique, Amerique, or Ame- 
ric, is an indigenous word, the terminal 
ique or ic being common for the names 
of locality, in the language of the Lenca 
Indians of Central America, a part of 
Mexico; and that this name has been 
perpetuated without alteration since the 
discovery of the New World, by the 
complete isolation of the Indians who 
live in this part of the continent, who 
call their mountains by the same word 
to-day as they did in 1502, when Colom- 
bo visited them, Amerrique, Amerique, 
or Americ. These mountains are aurif- 
erous; at their foot lie the gold mines 
of Libertad and Santo Domingo, and 
further, the gold of the alluvium or the 
placers is entirely exhausted, which can 
only be explained through a previous 
washing by the Indians themselves; at 
present the gold is to be found only in 
the veins of quartz rock. 

Colombo says the Indians named sev- 
eral localities rich in gold, but he does 
not give the names in his very curtailed 
account, contenting himself with citino- 
the name of the province of Ciamba; 
but it is highly probable that this name 
Americ or Amerrique was often pro- 


nounced by the Indians in answer to the 
pressing demands of the Europeans of 
the expedition. The eagerness for gold 
was such among the first navigators 
that it formed their chief preoccupation 
everywhere; and it is almost certain 
that to their continual questions as to 
the place where the gold was found that 
the Indians wore as ornaments, the reply 
would be, from Americ, this word signi- 
fying the most elevated and conspicuous 
part of the interior, the upper country, 
the distinguishing feature of the prov- 
ince of Ciamba. 

It does not follow that Colombo was 
ignorant of the word Americ because he 
has omitted it in the Lettera Rarissi- 
ma, which was addressed by him to his 
Catholic Majesty, the powerful King of 
Spain. It is evident, from his mention 
of several places where gold was to be 
found, as the Indians had told him with- 
out giving their names, that he did not 
tell all he knew; and it must be re- 
membered that the Lettera Rarissima 
was written under the most painful cir- 
cumstances. He was a prisoner in the 
island of Jamaica, loaded with chains, 
old, infirm, and overwhelmed by suffer- 
ing and injustice, and not in a position 
to make a very full report of his expedi- 
tion. His account of his fourth voyage 
is the least clear and precise of all his 
writings, showing in its confused and 
melancholy style the sad condition to 
which he was reduced, and although the 
name Americ is not seen therein, the 
region may have been considered by Co- 
lombo and his companions as an unex- 
plored El Dorado, occupying the interior 
of the country in the province of Ciam- 
ba, along the coasts of which they had 
navigated. 

We may suppose that Colombo and 
his companions on their return to Eu- 
rope, when relating their adventures, 
would boast of the rich gold mines they 
had discovered through the Indians of 
Nicaragua, and say they lay in the di- 
rection of Americ. This would make 
popular the word Americ, as the com- 
mon designation of that part of the In- 
dies in which the richest mines of gold 
in the New World were situated. 


294 


Origin of the Name America . 


[March, 


The word Americ, a synonym for this 
golden country, would become known 
in the sea-ports of the West Indies and 
then in those of Europe, and would 
gradually penetrate into the interior of 
the continent, so that a printer and 
bookseller in Saint Die, at the foot of 
the Vosges, would have heard the word 
Americ without understanding its true 
meaning as an indigenous Indian word, 
but would become acquainted with it in 
conversations about these famous dis- 
coveries, as designating a country in the 
New Indies very rich in mines of gold. 

Hylacomylus 1 of Saint Die, ignorant 
of any printed account of these voyages 
but those of Albericus Vespucius, — pub- 
lished in Latin in 1505, and in German 
in 1506, — thought he saw in the Chris- 
tian name Albericus the origin of this, 
for him, altered and corrupted word, 
Americ or Amerique, and renewing the 
fable of the monkey and the dolphin, 
who took the Piraeus for a man, called 
this country by the only name among 
those of the navigators that had reached 
him, and which resembled the word 
Americ or Amerique. 

In order to accomplish this it was 
necessary to change considerably the 
Christian name of Vespucius, and from 
Albericus, Alberico, Amerigo, 2 and Mo- 
rigo, — which are the different wavs 
of spelling the first name of Vespuzio, 
or Vespuchy, or Vespucci, — he made 
Amerieus! Thus, according to my view, 
it is owing to a grave mistake of Hyla- 
comylus that the aboriginal name of the 
New World, Americ or Amerique, has 
been Europeanized and connected with 
the son of Anastasio Vespuzio. 

Had this mistake occurred in Spain, 
Portugal, or the West Indies, evidently 
it would have been corrected; for Ves- 
puzio and many of the companions of 
Colombo were still living. But in the 
little town of Saint Die, the name of 

1 This teacher, bookseller, and printer of Saint 
Die (Vosges) is so little known that even his name 
is not exactly known ; it is thought to have been 
Martin WaldseemUller or Waltzemuller, and that 
the Latin name of Hylacomylus was adopted by him 
in accordance with the custom of the time. 

2 It is important to remark that Hylacomylus 
knew only the names Albericus and Alberico, which 
renders the creation by him of the name A merica 


which probably was never known to 
Cristoforo Colombo or Alberico Vespu- 
zio, distant from any sea-port, this little 
pamphlet of the bookseller Hylacomy- 
lus 3 was restricted to a small circle; 
and in truth it is around this limited 
area that the error was propagated and 
prolonged by the publication of a new 
edition of the pamphlet of Hylacomylus 
at Strasburgin 1509, and by the appear- 
ance at Basle, in 1522, of the first map 
upon which was seen America provincia. 

This map, with the name America 
upon it, reached Spain long after the 
death of Cristoforo Colombo, which took 
place in 1506; and the companions of 
his expedition, almost all unlearned men, 
were also either dead or gone back to 
the Indies, and no one was there who 
could correct the mistake, even suppos- 
ing that the map gave the origin of the 
word. The name Americ had been 
heard, not as that of a man, but of a 
country, of an undetermined portion of 
the terra firma of the New World, and 
it was accepted without difficulty, no 
attention being paid to the mistake of 
the printer and bookseller of Saint Die, 
whose pamphlet was probably unknown 
in Spain. 

There can be little doubt that the 
word Americ was not only known, but 
popularized to a certain extent, in the 
sea-ports of Spain, Portugal, and the 
Indies, or it would not have been thus 
at once accepted by universal consent, 
without discussion. This is all the more 
probable from the fact that Hylacomy- 
lus, beside the marked alteration of the 
first name, Alberico, disregarded the 
rule which has always been followed in 
naming countries, by giving the first 
name instead of the family name of his 
hero; he should have called the New 
World Vespuzia or Vespucliia. 

The Christian name of an ordinary 
man is never used to designate a coun- 

still more improbable, if he had not heard the in- 
digenous name Americ. The first name of Vespuzio 
was only spelt Amerigo and Morigo in Spanish doc- 
uments that remained unpublished until many 
years after the death of Hylacomylus. 

3 Entitled, Cosmographiae Introductio cum qui- 
busdam Geometriae ac Astronomiae principis ; ad 
earn Rem necessariis insuper quatuor Americii 
Vespucii Navigationes ; p. 52 in quarto, 1507. 


1875 .] 


Origin of the Name America. 


295 


try, but only that of an emperor, king, 
queen, or prince; thus we say Straits 
of Magellan, Vancouver’s Island, Tas- 
mania, Van Diemen’s Land, etc., while 
we have, on the other hand, Louisiana, 
Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, Filipinas, 
Victoria, etc. There is no exception to 
this rule in the case of Cristoforo Co- 
lombo, for no one has thought of giving 
the name of Cristoforia to a country, 
and that of Cristoforo to a town; while 
at several epochs many names of Co- 
lombia, Columbia, Columbus, and Colon 
have been given. Furthermore, in giv- 
ing to Vespuzio the honor of naming 
the New World, Hylacomylus, using 
the Christian name contrary to all pre- 
cedent, should have named it Albericia 
or Amerigia or Amerigo nia or Morigia, 
and not America. 

The only way to explain this name, 
reached with such difficulty, is that 
Hylacomylus had previously heard pro- 
nounced the name Americ or Amerique. 

Amerigo Vespuchy (as the name is 
written by Cristoforo Colombo in his 
letter dated Seville, 5 February, 1505) 
died in 1512, long before the publication 
at Basle of the map in Mela cum Com- 
mentatio Vadium, without knowing 11 the 
dangerous glory that was preparing for 
him at Saint Die,” as Humboldt ex- 
presses it; he believed until the end of 
his life that the New World was the 
coast of Asia, and died as he had lived, 
piloto mayor de Indias. 

This belief in the Indies, and the 
nearness to the river Ganges of their 
discoveries, prevented Colombo, his con- 
temporaries, and liis successors, from 
giving the countries they found a col- 
lective name. The idea originated with 
men in the interior of the Continent of 
Europe, unacquainted practically with 
the navigation of those times, so fever- 
ish with the excitement of voyages ; and 
who, repeating the sayings of the sailors, 
’without knowing very well what they 
were about, applied a name already 
known to those who had returned from 
the Indies, but which was without any 
exact geographical position, to an en- 
tire group of newly discovered lands, 
hardly then recognized as a whole. 


The mistake of the theoretical geog- 
raphers of Saint Die, Strasburg, and 
Basle could hardly have been corrected, 
unless by Colombo, who was no longer 
in this world; and then the discoveries 
of Cortez, Pizarro, and others, came to 
change the direction of ideas as to the 
countries fabulously rich in gold. 

Although Nicaragua was conquered 
in 1522 by Gil Gonzales de Avida, a 
part of it remained wholly unknown, 
especially the region extending from the 
Atlantic to Lake Nicaragua, in which 
lies the Amerrique range; and the igno- 
rance of this part of America has con- 
tinued so long, that the Californian em- 
igration even has passed by it across 
the Isthmus of Nicaragua without any 
knowledge of or interest in its existence. 
It may be said that the region of coun- 
try lying between the Caribbean Sea and 
the dividing line for the waters that flow 
into Lake Nicaragua is to this day en- 
tirely unknown; the Carcas and Ramas 
Indians, especially the latter, oppose any 
entrance into their country, rejecting 
even the Indians who search for caout- 
chouc, and who intrepidly pursue their 
work in countries as yet closed. 

The theory I have presented has some 
great advantages. In the first place, it 
takes nothing from the glory of Colom- 
bo, the name of the continent discovered 
by him being an indigenous name which, 
from designating a small and limited 
country, has been extended to include 
the whole of the New World, through 
the mistake of a teacher, printer, and 
bookseller in a little town hidden among 

O 

the Vosges Mountains. 

The accusations of plagiarism from 
which Alberico Vespuzio has suffered 
are abolished, and there is no longer 
any reason to reproach him with having 
imposed, or having suffered to be im- 
posed, his Christian name on a whole 
continent; inasmuch as this name was 
never Americ or Amerique, but Alberico 
or Amerigo. The name Americ, al- 
though aboriginal, makes no confusion 
between a part and the whole, because 
the locality where it exists as lieu-dit is 
too small, obscure, and insignificant to 
give rise to any false or double mean- 


296 


Delay . 


[March, 


ings of the term. Finally, this name 
appears to be admirably chosen, extend- 
ing as the A meric range does from the 
centre to the extremities of the conti- 
nent, radiating as it were, giving one 
hand to the North and one to the South, 
looking to the Antilles and to the Paci- 
fic, and being even the central point of 
the immense chain of mountains which 
extends from the Tierra del Fuego to 
the borders of Mackenzie River, and 
forms the backbone of the western hem- 
isphere; in truth, the longest range of 
mountains upon our globe. 

It is well chosen, also, as it proba- 
bly was heard by the great Admiral Co- 
lombo on his fourth voyage, the illustri- 
ous discoverer of the New World being 

O 


the first European who heard and pro- 
nounced the word Americ or Amerrique, 
although we have no material certain- 
ty of this. Had the name belonged to 
a part of either extremity of the con- 
tinent, it would hardly have been so 
readily accepted; but it grasped and 
took the New World as it were round 
the centre, vaguely, merely signifying a 
region very rich in gold mines; and it 
was employed and accepted without a 
thought of the pilot Alberico Vespuzio ; 
it was a long time after that discussions 
arose among learned geographers, and 
that the gross mistake of Hylacomylus 
was imposed upon the world as truth. 
In a word, the name Americ is Amer- 
ican. 

Jules Marcou, 


DELAY. 

Taste the sweetness of delaying, 

Till the hour shall come for saying 
That I love you with my soul; 

Have you never thought your heart 
Finds a something in the part, 

It would miss from out the whole? 

In this rosebud you have given, 

Sleeps that perfect rose of heaven 
That in Fancy’s garden blows; 

Wake it not by touch or sound, 

Lest, perchance, ’t were lost, not found, 
In the opening of the rose. 

Dear to me is this reflection 
Of a fair and far perfection, 

Shining through a veil undrawn; 

Ask no question then of fate; 

Yet a little longer wait 

In the beauty of the dawn. 

Through our mornings, veiled and tender, 
Shines a day of golden splendor, 

Never yet fulfilled by day; 

Ah! if love be made complete, 

Will it, can it, be so sweet 
As this ever sweet delay? 


Louisa BushnelL 


1875.] 


Roderick Hudson . 


297 


RODERICK HUDSON. 


TIL 

ROME. 

One warm, still day, late in the Ro- 
man autumn, our two young men were 
sitting beneath one of the high-stemmed 
pines of the Villa Ludovisi. They had 
been spending an hour in the moldy 
little garden-house, where the colossal 
mask of the famous Juno looks out with 
blank eyes from that dusky corner which 
must seem to her the last possible stage 
of a lapse from Olympus. Then they 
had wandered out into the gardens, and 
were lounging away the morning under 
the spell of their magical picturesque- 
ness. Roderick declared that he would 
go nowhere else ; that, after the Juno, it 
was a profanation to look at anything 
but sky and trees. There was a fresco 
of Guercino, to which Rowland, though 
he had seen it on his former visit to 
Rome, went dutifully to pay his respects. 
But Roderick, though he had never seen 
it, declared that it could n’t be worth a 
fig, and that he didn’t care to look at 
ugly things. He remained stretched on 
his overcoat, which he had spread on 
the grass, while Rowland went off envy- 
ing the intellectual comfort of genius, 
© © ' 

which can arrive at serene conclusions 
without disagreeable processes. When 
the latter came back, his friend was sit- 
ting with his elbows on his knees and 
his head in his hands. Rowland, in the 
geniality of a mood attuned to the mel- 
low charm of a Roman villa, found a 
good word to say for the Guercino; but 
he chiefly talked of the view from the 
little belvedere on the roof of the casino, 
and how it looked like the prospect from 
a castle turret in a fairy tale. 

u Very likely,” said Roderick, throw- 
ing himself back with a yawn. “ But I 
must let it pass. I ’ve seen enough for 
the present; I ’ve reached the top of the 
hill. I ’ve an indigestion of impressions; 
I must work them off before I go in for 


any more. I don’t want to look at any 
more of other people’s works, for a 
month — not even at Nature’s own. I 
want to look at Roderick Hudson’s. The 
result of it all is that I ’m not afraid. I 
can but try, as well as the rest of them! 
The fellow who did that gazing god- 
dess yonder only made an experiment. 
The other day, when I was looking at 
Michael Angelo’s Moses, I was seized 
with a kind of defiance — a reaction 
against all this mere passive enjoyment 
of grandeur. It was a rousing great 
success, certainly, that rose there before 
me, but somehow it was not an inscruta- 
ble mystery, and it seemed to me, not 
perhaps that I should some day do as 
well, but that at least I might ! ” 

“ As you say, you can but try,” said 
Rowland. “ Success is only passionate 
effort. ’ ’ 

“ Well, the passion is blazing; we 
have 'been piling on fuel, handsomely. 
It came over me just now that it is ex- 
actly three months to a day since I left 
Northampton. I can’t believe it! ” 

“ It certainly seems more.” 

“ It seems like ten years. What a 
blessed voung fool I was! ” 

“ Do you feel so wise now? ” 

“ Verily! Don’t I look so? Surely 
I have n’t the same face. Have n’t I 
a different eye, a different expression, a 
different voice? ” 

“ I can hardly say, because I have 
seen the transition. But it ’s very like- 

J 

ly. You are, in the literal sense of the 
word, more civilized. I dare say,” 
added Rowland, “ that Miss Garland 
would think so.” 

“ That ’s not what she would call it; 
she would say I was corrupted.” 

Rowland asked few questions about 
Miss Garland, but he always listened 
narrowly to his companion’s voluntary 
observations. 

“ Are you very sure? ” he replied. 

“ Why, she ’s a stern moralist, and 
she would infer from my appearance that 


298 


f 


Roderick Hudson. 


[March, 


I had become a reckless Epicurean.” 
Roderick had, in fact, a Venetian watch- 
chain round his neck and a magnificent 
Roman intaglio on the third finger of his 

O O 

left hand. 

“ Will you think I take a liberty,” 
asked Rowland, “ if I say you judge her 
superficially? ” 

“ For Heaven’s sake,” cried Roder- 
ick, laughing, “ don’t tell me she ’s not 
a moralist! It was for that I fell in love 
with her, and with rigid virtue in her 
person. ” 

“ She is a moralist, but not, as you 
imply, a narrow one. That ’s more 
than a difference in degree; it ’s a dif- 
ference in kind. I don’t know whether 
I ever mentioned it, but I admire her 
extremely. There is nothing narrow 
about her but her experience; every- 
thing else is large. My impression of 
her is of a person of great capacity, 
as yet wholly unmeasured and untested. 
Some day or other, I ’m sure, she ’ll 
judge fairly and wisely of everything.” 

“Hold on!” cried Roderick; “you 
’re a better Catholic than the Pope. I 
shall be content if she judges fairly of 
me — of my merits, that is. The rest 
she must not judge at all. She ’s a sim- 
ple, devoted little creature; may she 
alwavs remain so! Changed as I am, I 
adore her none the less. What becomes 
of all our emotions, our impressions,” he 
went on, after a long pause, “ all the 
material of thought that life pours into 
us at such a rate during such a memora- 
ble three months as these? There are 
twenty moments a week — a day, for 
that matter, some days — that seem su- 
preme, twenty impressions that seem ul- 
timate, that appear to form an intellect- 
ual era. But others come treading on 
their heels and sweeping them along, and 
they all melt like water into water and 
settle the question of precedence among 
themselves. The curious thing is that 
the more, the mind takes in, the more it 
has space for, and that all one’s ideas 
are like the Irish people at home who 
live in the different corners of a room, 
and take boarders.” 

‘ ‘ I fancy it is our peculiar good luck 
that we don’t see the limits of our 


minds,” said Rowland. “ We are young, 
compared with what we may one day 
be. That belongs to youth; it is per- 
haps the best part of it. They say that 
old people do find themselves at last 
face to face with a solid blank wall, and 
stand thumping against it in vain. It 
resounds, it seems to have something 
beyond it, but it won’t move! That ’s 
only a reason for living with open doors 
as long as we can! ” 

“ Open doors? ” murmured Roder- 
ick. “ Yes, let us close no doors that 
open upon Rome. For this, for the 
mind, is eternal summer! But though 
my doors may stand open to-day,” he 
presently added, “ I shall see no visit- 
ors. I want to pause and breathe; I 
want to dream of a statue. I have been 
working hard for three months; I have 
earned a right to a reverie.” 

Rowland, on his side, was not without 
provision for reflection, and they lin- 
gered on in broken, desultory talk. Row- 
land felt the need for intellectual rest, 
for a truce to present care for churches, 
statues, and pictures, on even better 
grounds than his companion, inasmuch 
as he had really been living Roderick’s 
intellectual life the past three months, as 
well as his own. As he looked back on 
these full-flavored weeks, he drew a lonor 
breath of satisfaction, almost of relief. 
Roderick, thus far, had justified his 
confidence and flattered his perspicacity; 
he was unfolding into all the brilliancy 
he had foreseen. He was changed even 
more than he himself suspected; he 
had stepped, without faltering, into his 
birthright, and was spending money, in- 
tellectually, as lavishly as a young heir 
who has just won an obstructive law- 
suit. Roderick’s glance and voice were 
the same, doubtless, as when they en- 
livened the summer dusk on Cecilia’s 
veranda, but in his person, generally, 
there was an indefinable expression of 
experience rapidly and easily assimi- 
lated. Rowland had been struck at the 
outset with the instinctive quickness of 
his observation, and his free appropria- 
tion of whatever might serve his pur- 
pose. He had not been, for instance, 
half an hour on English soil before he 


\ 


1875.] 


Roderick Hudson . 


299 


perceived that he was dressed like a rus- 
tic, and he had immediately reformed his 
toilet with the most unerring tact. His 
appetite for novelty was insatiable, and 
for everything characteristically foreign, 
as it presented itself, he had an extrav- 
ao-ant greeting; but in half an hour the 
novelty had faded, he had guessed the 
secret, he had plucked out the heart 
of the mystery and was clamoring for 
a keener sensation. At the end of a 
month, he presented, mentally, to his 
companion, a puzzling spectacle. He 
had caught, instinctively, the key-note 
of the old world. He observed and 
enjoyed, he criticised and rhapsodized, 
but though all things interested him and 
many delighted him, none surprised him; 
he had divined their logic and measured 
their proportions, and referred them 
unerringly to their categories. Witness- 
ing the rate at which he did intellect- 
ual execution on the general spectacle 
of European life, Rowland, at moments, 
felt vaguely uneasy for the future; the 
boy was living too fast, he would have 
said, and giving alarming pledges to 
ennui in his later years. But we must 
live as our pulses are timed, and Rod- 
erick’s struck the hour very often. He 
was, by imagination, though he never 
became in manner, a natural man of 
the world; he had intuitively, as an art- 
ist, what one may call the historic con- 
sciousness. He had a relish for social 
subtleties and mysteries, and, in percep- 
tion, when occasion offered him an inch 
he never failed to take an ell. A single 
glimpse of a social situation of the elder 
type enabled him to construct the whole, 
with all its complex chiaroscuro, and 
Rowland more than once assured him 
that he made him believe in the metemp- 
sychosis, and that he must have lived 
in European society, in the last century, 
as a gentleman in a cocked hat and flow- 
ered waistcoat. Hudson asked Rowland 
questions which poor Rowland was quite 
unable to answer, and of which he was 
equally unable to conceive where he had 
picked up the data. Roderick ended by 
answering them himself, tolerably to his 
satisfaction, and in a short time he had 
almost turned the tables and become 


in their walks and talks the accredit- 
ed source of information. Rowland told 
him that when he turned sculptor a cap- 
ital novelist was spoiled, and that to 
match his eye for social detail one would 
have to go to Honore de Balzac. In all 
this Rowland took a generous pleasure; 
he felt an especial kindness for his com- 
rade’s radiant youthfulness of tempera- 
ment . He was so much vounger than 
he himself had ever been ! And surely 
youth and genius, hand in hand, were 
the most beautiful sight in the world. 
Roderick added to this the charm of 
his more immediately personal qualities. 
The vivacity of his perceptions, the au- 
dacity of his imagination, the pictur- 
esqueness of his phrase when he was 
pleased, — and even more when he was 
displeased, — his abounding good-humor, 
his candor, his unclouded frankness, his 
unfailing impulse to share every emotion 
and impression with his friend; all this 
made comradeship a pure felicity, and 
interfused with a deeper amenity their 
long evening talks at cafe doors in Ital- 
ian towns. 

They had gone almost immediately to 
Paris, and had spent their days at the 
Louvre and their evenings at the the- 
atre. Roderick was divided in mind as 
to whether Titian or Mademoiselle De- 
laporte was the greater artist. They 
had come down through France to Ge- 
noa and Milan, had spent a fortnight 
in Venice and another in Florence, and 
had now been a month in Rome. Rod- 
erick had said that he meant to spend 
three months in simply looking, absorb- 
ing, and reflecting, without putting pen- 
cil to paper. He looked indefatigably, 
and certainly saw great things — things 
greater, doubtless, at times, than the 
intentions of the artist. And yet he 
made few false steps and wasted little 
time in theories of what he ought to like 
and to dislike. He judged instinctively 
and passionately, but never vulgarly. 
At Venice, for a couple of days, he had 
half a fit of melancholy over the pre- 
tended discovery that he had missed his 
way, and that the only proper vestment 
of plastic conceptions was the coloring 
of Titian and Paul Veronese. Then 


300 


Roderick Hudson. 


! 


[March, 


one morning the two young men had 
themselves rowed out to Torcello, and 
Roderick lay back for a couple of hours 
watchino- a brown-breasted gondolier 
making superb muscular movements, in 
high relief, against the sky of the Adri- 
atic, and at the end jerked himself up 
with a violence that nearly swamped 
the gondola, and declared that the only 
thin or worth living; for was to make a 
colossal bronze and set it aloft in the 
light of a public square. In Rome his 
first care was for the Vatican ; he went 
there ao-ain and again. But the old im- 
perial and papal city altogether delight- 
ed him ; only there he really found what 
he had been looking for from the first — 
the complete antipodes of Northampton. 
And indeed Rome is the natural home 
of those spirits with which we just now 
claimed fellowship for Roderick — the 
spirits with a deep relish for the arti- 
ficial element in life and the infinite 
superpositions of history. It is the im- 
memorial city of convention. The stag- 
nant Roman air is charged with con- 
vention; it colors the yellow light and 
deepens the chilly shadows. And in 
that still recent day the most impress- 
ive convention in all history was visible 
to men’s eyes, in the Roman streets, 
erect in a gilded coach drawn by four 
black horses. Roderick’s first fortnight 
was a high aesthetic revel. He declared 
that Rome made him feel and under- 
stand more things than he could ex- 
press: he was sure that life must have 
there, for all one’s senses, an incom- 
parable fineness; that more interesting 
things must happen to one than any- 
where else. And he gave Rowland to 
understand that he meant to live free- 
ly and largely, and be as interested as 
occasion demanded. Rowland saw no 
reason to regard this as a menace of 
dissipation, because, in the first place, 
there was in all dissipation, refine it as 
one might, a grossness which would dis- 
qualify it for Roderick’s favor, and be- 
cause, in the second, the young sculptor 
was a man to regard all things in the 
light of his art, to hand over his pas- 
sions to his genius to be dealt with, and 
to find that he could live largely enough 


without exceeding the circle of legiti- 

© © 

mate activity. Rowland took immense 
satisfaction in his companion’s deep im- 
patience to make something of all his im- 
pressions. Some of these indeed found 
their way into a channel which did not 
lead to statues, but it was none the less 
a safe one. He wrote frequent long let- 
ters to Miss Garland; when Rowland 
went with him to post them he thought 
wistfully of the fortune of the great, 
loosely - written missives, which cost 
Roderick unconscionable sums in post- 
age. He received punctual answers of 
a more frugal form, written in a clear, 
minute hand, on paper vexatiously thin. 
If Rowland was present when they 
came, he turned away and thought of 
other things — or tried to. These were 
the only moments when his sympathy 
halted, and they were brief. For the 
rest he let the days go by unprotestingly, 
and enjoyed Roderick’s serene efflores- 
cence as he would have done a beautiful 
summer sunrise. Rome, for the past 
month, had been delicious. The annual 
descent of the Goths had not yet begun, 
and sunny leisure seemed to brood over 
the city. 

Roderick had taken out a note-book 
and was roughly sketching a memento 
of the great Juno. Suddenly there was 
a noise on the gi^vel, and the young 
men, looking up, saw three persons ad- 
vancing. One was a woman of middle 
© 

age, with a rather grand air and a great 
many furbelows. She looked very hard 
at our friends as she passed, and glanced 
back over her shoulder, as if to hasten 
the step of a young girl who slowly fol- 
lowed her. She had such an expansive 
majesty of mien that Rowland supposed 
she must have some proprietary right in 
the villa, and was not just then in a 
hospitable mood. Beside her walked a 
little elderly man, tightly buttoned in a 
shabby black coat, but with a flower in 
his lappet, and a pair of soiled light 
gloves. He was a grotesque-looking 
personage, and might have passed for a 
gentleman of the old school, reduced by 
adversity to playing cicerone to foreign- 
ers of distinction. He had a little black 
eye which glittered like a diamond and 


V 


1875.] 


Roderick Hudson. 


301 


\ 


X 


rolled about like a ball of quicksilver, 
and a white mustache, cut short and 
stiff, like a worn-out brush. He was 
smiling with extreme urbanity, and talk- 
ing: in a low, mellifluous voice to the 
lady, who evidently was not listening to 
him. At a considerable distance behind 
this couple strolled a young girl, appar- 
ently of about twenty. She was tall 
and slender, and dressed with extreme 
elegance; she led by a cord a large 
poodle of the most fantastic aspect. He 
was combed and decked like a ram for 
sacrifice; his trunk and haunches were 
of the most transparent pink, his fleecy 
head and shoulders as white as jeweler’s 
cotton, and his tail and ears ornamented 
with long blue ribbons. He stepped 
along stiffly and solemnly beside his mis- 
tress, with an air of conscious elegance. 
There was something at first slightly 
ridiculous in the sight of a young lady 
gravely appended to an animal of these 
incongruous attributes, and Roderick, 
with his customary frankness, greeted 
the spectacle with a confident smile. 
The young girl perceived it and turned 
her face full upon him, with a gaze in- 
tended apparently to enforce greater def- 
erence. It was not deference, however, 
her face provoked, but startled, submis- 
sive admiration; Roderick’s smile fell 
dead, and he sat eagerly staring. A pair 
of extraordinary dark blue eyes, a mass 
of dusky hair over a low forehead, a 
blooming oval of perfect purity, a flex- 
ible lip, just touched with disdain, the 
step and carriage of a tired princess — 
these were the general features of his 
vision. The young lady was walking 
slowly and letting her long dress rustle 
over the gravel; the young men had time 
to see her distinctly before she averted 
her face and went her way. She left a 
vague, sweet perfume behind her as she 
passed. 

“ Immortal powers! ” cried Roderick, 
“ what a vision! In the name of tran- 
scendent perfection, who is she? ” He 
sprang up and stood looking after her 
until she rounded a turn in the avenue. 
“ What a movement, what a manner, 
what a poise of the head ! I wonder if 
she would sit to me. ” 


“ You ’d better go and ask her,” said 
Rowland, laughing. “ She ’s certainly 
most beautiful.” 

‘‘Beautiful? She’s beauty itself — 
she’s a revelation. I don’t believe 
she ’s living — she ’s a phantasm, a va- 
por, an illusion ! ” 

“ The poodle,” said Rowland, “ is 
certainly alive.” 

“Nay, he too may be a grotesque 
phantom, like the black dog in Faust.” 

“ I hope at least that the young lady 
has nothing in common with Mepliis- 
topheles. She looked dangerous.” 

“If beauty is immoral, as people 
think at Northampton,” said Roderick, 
“she’s the incarnation of evil. The 
mamma and the queer old gentleman, 
moreover, are a pledge of her reality. 
Who are they all ? ” 

“ The Prince and Princess Ludovisi 
and the principessina ,” suggested Row- 
land. 

“ There are no such people,” said 
Roderick. “ Besides, the little old man 
isn’t the papa.” Rowland smiled, 
wondering: how he had ascertained these 
facts, and the young sculptor went on. 
“ The old man is a Roman, a hanger- 
on of the mamma, a useful personage 
who now and then gets asked to din- 
ner. The ladies are foreigners, from 
some Northern country; I won’t say 
which.” 

“ Perhaps from the State of Maine,” 
said Rowland. 

“ No, she ’s not an American, I ’ll 
lay a wager on that. She ’s a daughter 
of this elder world. We shall see her 
again, I pray my stars; but if we don’t, 
I shall have done something I never ex- 


pected to — 1 shall have had a glimpse 
of ideal beauty.” He sat down again 
and went on with his sketch of the Juno, 
scrawled away for ten minutes, and then 
handed the result in silence to Rowland. 
Rowland uttered an exclamation of sur- 
prise and applause. The drawing rep- 
resented the Juno as to the position of 
the head, the brow, and the broad fillet 
across the hair; but the eyes, the mouth, 
the physiognomy, were a vivid portrait 
of the young girl with the poodle. “I 
have been wanting a subject,” said 


302 


Roderick Hudson. 


i'll 

i . > v 


Roderick: u there ’s one made to my 
hand ! And now for work ! ’ ’ 

They saw no more of the young girl, 
though Roderick looked hopefully, for 
some days, into the carriages on the 
Pincian. She had evidently been but 
passing through Rome; Naples or Flor- 
ence now happily possessed her, and 
she was guiding her fleecy companion 
through the Villa Reale or the Boboli 
Gardens with the same superb defiance 
of irony. Roderick went to work and 
spent a month shut up in his studio; 
he had an idea, and he was not to rest 
till he had embodied it. He had estab- 
lished himself in the basement of a huge, 
dusky, dilapidated old house in that 
long, tortuous, and preeminently Ro- 
man street which leads from the Corso 
to the Bridge of St. Angelo. The black 
archway which admitted you might have 
served as the portal of the Augean 
stables, but you emerged presently upon 
a moldv little court, of which the 

fourth side was formed bv a narrow 

•/ 

terrace, overhanging the Tiber. Here, 
along the parapet, were stationed half 
a dozen shapeless fragments of sculpt- 
ure, with a couple of meagre orange- 
trees in terra-cotta tubs, and an oleander 
that never flowered. The unclean, his- 
toric river swept beneath; behind were 
dusky, reeking walls, spotted here and 
there with hanging rags and flower-pots 
in windows; opposite, at a distance, were 
the bare brown banks of the stream, the 
huge rotunda of St. Angelo, tipped with 
its seraphic statue, the dome of St. 
Peter’s, and the broad-topped pines of 
the Villa Doria. The place was crum- 
bling and shabby and melancholy, but 
the river was delightful, the rent was a 
trifle, and everything was picturesque. 
Roderick was in the best humor with 
his quarters from the first, and was cer- 
tain that the working mood there would 
be in tenser in an hour than in twenty 
years of Northampton. His studio was 
a huge, empty room with a vaulted ceil- 
ing, covered with vague, dark traces of 
an old fresco, which Rowland, when he 
spent an hour with his friend, used to 
stare at vainly for some surviving co- 
herence of floating draperies and clasp- 


ing arms. Roderick had lodged himself 
economically in the same quarter. He 
occupied a fifth floor on the Ripetta, but 
he was only at home to sleep, for when 
he was not at work, he was either loung- 
ing in Rowland’s more luxurious rooms, 
or strolling through streets and churches 

o o 

and gardens. 

Rowland had found a convenient cor- 
ner in a stately old palace not far from 
the Fountain of Trevi, and made him- 
self a home to which books and pictures 
and prints and odds and ends of curious 
furniture gave an air of leisurely perma- 
nence. He had the tastes of a collector; 
he spent half his afternoons ransack- . 
ing the dusty magazines of the curios- 
ity-mongers, and often made his way, 
in quest of a prize, into the heart of 
impecunious Roman households, which 
had been prevailed upon to listen — 
with closed doors and an impenetrably 
wary smile — to proposals for an heredi- 
tary antique.” In the evening, often, 
under the lamp, amid dropped curtains 
and the scattered gleam of firelight upon 
polished carvings and mellow paintings, 
the two friends sat with their heads to- 
gether, criticising intaglios and etchings, 

O 7 O O O 7 

water -color drawings, and illuminated 
missals. Roderick’s quick appreciation 
of every form of artistic beauty remind- 
ed his companion of the prolific tempera- 
ment of those Italian artists of the six- 
teenth century who were indifferently 
painters and sculptors, sonneteers and 
engravers. At times, when he saw how 
the young sculptor’s day passed in a sin- 
gle sustained pulsation, while his own 
was broken into a dozen conscious de- 
vices for disposing of the hours, and in- 
termingled with sighs, half suppressed, 
some of them, for conscience’ sake, over 
what he failed of in action and missed 
in possession — he felt a pang of some- 
thing akin to envy. But Rowland had 
two substantial aids for giving patience 
the air of contentment: he was a pro- 
miscuous reader and a passionate rider. 
He plunged into bulky German octavos 
on Italian history, and he spent long 
afternoons in the saddle, ranging over 
the grassy desolation of the Campagna. 
As the season went on and the social 


